MORE than ever, Lennox Lewis was now hankering after a career-defining unification bout with WBA and IBF champion Evander Holyfield, but his short-term hopes were soon dashed. It was announced that Holyfield would next be meeting Lewis’s old rival and WBA number one contender Henry Akinwande on 6 June 1998. With Holyfield’s immediate future tied up, it was proposed that Lewis would next meet the WBC number one contender Zeljko Mavrovic in the Croatian capital city of Zagreb. Purse bids for the bout were put on hold by the WBC to enable the Lewis camp to negotiate a seven-fight deal with HBO. At the end of June, a deal between the two parties was struck and a no-strings $20m offer was made to Holyfield to meet Lewis on 5 or 12 December. Lewis would first go through with the Mavrovic bout and Holyfield would meet Akinwande in late August. However, the Akinwande fight was cancelled when the challenger contracted hepatitis B.

Instead, Holyfield agreed to face his IBF mandatory challenger Vaughn Bean in Atlanta, Georgia on 19 September, while Lewis would face Mavrovic the following week. If both came through, a unification match would then be held to find a true world heavyweight champion. When Holyfield beat Bean, albeit on a rather unconvincing 12-round points decision, it became imperative that Lewis did not slip up against Mavrovic.

Although Mavrovic was unbeaten in 27 fights, with 22 wins inside the distance, he was not well known in America. The vast majority of his bouts had been in Germany against mediocre European journeymen. Even though the bout ended up taking place in the US, interest was minimal. Mavrovic was considered a solid performer with a good chin, but if powerful punchers like Tommy Morrison and Andrew Golota couldn’t budge Lewis, what chance did Mavrovic have? He had never met anyone of Lewis’s size and power before.

To prepare for the bout, Mavrovic abandoned the modern facilities he usually used in Chicago and travelled to his native Croatia. His trainer John ‘Darkie’ Smith said: ‘In Croatia it’s very rugged, which Zeljko prefers. While Lewis will be in camp for two months, Zeljko’s been getting ready for eight. We’ve been doing a range of things at different stages to bring him to where we want him. He’s already done plenty of good, fast sparring for conditioning.’

Smith was also confident his man could pull off an upset. ‘Yes, he [Lewis] is very, very powerful but he has three or four flaws we intend taking advantage of,’ Smith said. ‘Lewis hasn’t the greatest chin. Oliver McCall done him and so would Shannon Briggs if he’d known how to finish. Nowadays it seems when Lennox gets hit on the chops, he doesn’t know whether he wants to be a fighter or lying on some beach in the Caribbean. I think Lennox will come out trying to finish us early because he’ll think he has the power and the bulk. But he may come unstuck because Zeljko isn’t Andrew Golota. He won’t stand like a rabbit in the car’s headlights. You can only go with the tools you’ve got and whatever Emanuel Steward says about Lennox I know my fighter is every bit as good.’

Steward played down Mavrovic’s credentials, retorting: ‘It’s really a no-win situation even with Lennox winning with an early knockout. People in the States don’t know Mavrovic even though he has a 27-0 record with 22 knockouts, but there’s not a name on that record anybody would recognise. It’s one of the least impressive records I’ve ever seen in my life, but Mavrovic winds up as the WBC’s number one contender. How does that happen?’

Lewis agreed, adding: ‘Mavrovic was a good amateur and he is surprisingly undefeated despite not having a knockout punch. This guy has never been hit but I’m going to hit him – and hard.’

Mavrovic, who had been out of the ring for 11 months, sported a Mohawk haircut, a nod to his admiration of the Mohawk Indians. The bout, easily the biggest of Mavrovic’s career, was held in a $1.5m pavilion erected in the casino’s car park.

Mavrovic didn’t shrink from the task. He held his ground and put up a competitive fight but lacked the firepower to turn the bout his way. Lewis tired early, later claiming he had ‘trained wrong’, but landed more clean punches over the 12 rounds to win by scores of 119-109, 117-112 and 117-111.

Afterwards, Lewis said: ‘Look, some fighters give you hard times. He is ranked number one. I thought I would knock him out, but give him respect. He has a great chin.’

Steward admitted: ‘Lennox was puffing at the end of round three. He trained properly for the fight. I just couldn’t understand why he got tired.’

Mavrovic said: ‘I gave my best. Lennox was the better man this night. I was so proud to be here. His uppercut was his best weapon, particularly after he recognised he could stop me with that punch.’

It was first time in more than two years that Lewis had gone the distance and once again he had shown questionable stamina. It was a perceived weakness that might have encouraged Evander Holyfield, whose shadow now loomed in Lewis’s midst. Their showdown was just around the corner.